1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image reproducing system and, more particularly, to an image reproducing system comprising an image reproducing apparatus and a control unit such as a computer or the like to externally control the image reproducing apparatus.
2. Related Background Art
As a system to easily record a still image, an electronic still camera has been known. In the electronic still camera, a photographed image is recorded in an analog or digital manner onto a recording medium of a small size and a relatively large capacity such as small magnetic disk, solid-state memory device (D-RAM, EEPROM, flash memory, or the like which is backed up by a battery), optical disc, magnetooptical disk, or the like. In general, the electronic still camera also has a reproducing function. By connecting a liquid crystal TV or the like to a video output terminal of the electronic still camera, the photographed image can be monitored on the spot. A desk top type reproducing apparatus has also been put into practical use.
A small magnetic disk as an early recording medium has a diameter of two inches and is called a still video floppy. Such a still video floppy has 50 tracks and is specified so as to record a video signal of one field to one track. It is troublesome to individually reproduce maximum 50 images recorded and to check the contents. Therefore, there has been proposed a technique such that a plurality of, for example, 9 (3xc3x973), 16 (4xc3x974), or 25 (5xc3x975) images are reduced and displayed in a lump (multi-image) on one screen. Such a batch display image is hereinafter called an index screen or index image.
For this purpose, however, the index image is recorded onto the same still video floppy which has previously been formed or, when such an index image is not yet recorded, the recording image of each track is reproduced and reduced and stored into a field (or frame) memory, the recording images of the necessary number are stored into such a memory and an index image is formed, and after that, the image data is read out from the memory, and the index image is displayed onto the monitor screen. That is, there is a drawback such that in order to display the index image, the reproducing head is sequentially moved to each track of the still video floppy and the recording image of each track must be reproduced, so that it takes a long time to reproduce the recording images.
If the recording images are reproduced to form an index image each time the still video floppy is exchanged, the magnetic head will be soon abraded.
Such a problem is not limited to the above floppy but similarly occurs even in case of another medium such as optical disk or tape-shaped medium.
In recent years, an image processing technique on a computer has progressed and, for instance, there has been proposed an image processing system such that a reproducing apparatus of an image recording medium such as a still video floppy is controlled by a computer and the reproduced image is edited and processed by the computer.
Even in such systems, the above problem also occurs.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an image reproducing system which can totally or individually solve the above problems.
Another object of the invention is to provide an image reproducing system which can promptly execute a reproducing process.
Still another object of the invention is to provide an image processing system which can reduce a possibility of a damage of a medium.
Under such objects, according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is disclosed an image reproducing system comprising an image reproducing apparatus for reproducing an image which is recorded onto an image recording medium in accordance with an external control signal and a control unit which has a memory device of a predetermined memory capacity and which controls the image reproducing apparatus, wherein an index image consisting of a predetermined number of recording images on the image recording medium is stored into the memory device of the control unit together with identification information to specify the image recording medium, more preferably, the identification information is also recorded onto the image recording medium.
Further another object of the invention is to provide an image reproducing apparatus to construct the above system.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a memory device to construct the above system.
Still another object of the invention is to provide an image reproducing system having a novel function.
The above and other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description and the appended claims with reference to the accompanying drawings.